Fear Stalks the Village

＂Ambling along the lanes of a sleepy village in the Downs, passing cozy Tudor cottages rustling with wisteria, a novelist imagines the sordid truth hidden behind the quaint, rustic facade. Her musings are confirmed when a spate of anonymous poison pen letters shocks the community, turning neighbor against neighbor and embroiling everyone from the rector and the ＂queen of the village＂ Decima Asprey to the high-born Scudamores. With venom in the air, the perpetrator a mystery, and dark secrets threatening to come to light, a shadow of shame and scandal stretches over the parish, with death and disaster following in its wake. Revelling in the wickedness that lies beneath the idyllic veneer of village life, White’s 1932 mystery is inventive and a village mystery classic＂--